Raptor codes

Raptor codes, as with fountain codes in general, encode a given source block of data consisting of a number k of equal size source symbols into a potentially limitless sequence of encoding symbols such that reception of any k or more encoding symbols allows the source block to be recovered with some non-zero probability. The probability that the source block can be recovered increases with the number of encoding symbols received above k becoming very close to 1, once the number of received encoding symbols is only very slightly larger than k. For example, with the latest generation of Raptor codes, the RaptorQ codes, the chance of decoding failure when k encoding symbols have been received is less than 1%, and the chance of decoding failure when k+2 encoding symbols have been received is less than one in a million. A symbol can be any size, from a single byte to hundreds or thousands of bytes.